FOTS-POD Episode 20 is a bumper 1-hour special in which Executive Producer Robson and Craig embark on what sounds suspiciously like an ill-informed meander through local history. So, if you’ve ever found yourself wondering about the architecture and cultural history of certain areas of south Birmingham, and you also happen to like swearing, then this is the podcast you’ve been looking for.
As the name suggests, this is also the 20th podcast we’ve made and released out onto the internet. Thanks to everyone who has listened, subscribed and generally helped spread the word about these things. We hope you have as much fun listening to them as we do making them.
This podcast also comes with an added bonus of liner notes from Campbell, who made this one especially for you.
Listen:
TRACKLISTING:
Minstrel Show - Barry Goldberg
I Can Never Tell - The Crawdaddys
Son, This Is She - John Leyton
Beautiful Waste - The Triffids
Sand - Hush Arbors
Empire (State of Mind) - Jay-Z Feat Alicia Keys
Kingfish - Levon Helm and the Dirt Band
Reggeaman - Jack Morgan
Country Pie - Bob Dylan
Bad Fog of Lonliness- Neil Young
Woman’s Prison - Loretta Lynn
I’ll Be The Other Woman - Soul Children
Blue Skies - Noah and the Whale
“Barry Goldberg” is the only album Bob Dylan has produced for another artist, so far. Even then it’s taken over 30 years for his mixes to be released. It seems the late Jerry Wexler had an uncharacteristic taste bypass and removed all the original Muscle Shoals vocals etc. The re-released album is a real doozy, great tunes backed with the impeccable chops of The Swampers - the legendary Muscle Shoals session guys like Barry Beckett, Jimmy Johnson and Eddie Hinton. We are talking the players behind Percy Sledge, Aretha, Arthur Alexander, Wilson Pickett… so. like, even the fluffs sound great, right?
Find this on Children of Nuggets, a compilation of the next wave of bands influenced by the garage treasures on Lenny Kaye’s legendary Nuggets. Every home should have one of them… and Children of Nuggests is a pretty great follow-up. One of our previous podcasts features the unbelievable “Trains” by The Nashville Ramblers - one of the most exhilarating tunes you will ever hear by a band who probably haven’t even heard of themselves anymore.
This is from a Joe Meek compilation. Mad, brilliant and a bit frightening. We need a British David Lynch to use this kind of stuff in spooky British films (if British films weren’t so relentlessly shit these days… I have just watched that toss How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.. awful, awful, awful).
Fellow Australians The Go-Betweens are a huge influence on me (Cam) but I have to admit that The Triffids’ most beautiful, sun-bleached melancholia is up right there with Forster and McLennan. Beautiful Waste is one of at least 20 tunes I could have put here
Sometimes it takes a while for new brilliance to register with me (Cam) but this lot are starting to burn through the calcified layers of cynicism and laziness
What to say about this? It features three of my (Cam’s) absolute heroes. Levon Helm (natch), Larry Campbell (used to tour with Dylan, great player, now producing and arranging for Levon) and the songwriting of Randy Newman (double natch). Love this song so much, distils everything I love about a whole bunch of American musical styles, I love Levon Helm so much… man, this is just LOVELY!
They say Levon and Robbie Robertson have made their peace too so we may yet hear those two play together before the bar closes.
From the brilliant Look Around You 2 TV series from 2006 - this is Robert Popper as Jack Morgan (although he really sounds like Robin Cooper, my other new hero).
One of Bob’s surprisingly numerous filthy songs - it’s on Nashville Skyline too which most of the waistcoat wearing Bobcats (the guys you see sitting behind trestle tables full of C90 cassette-bootlegs in market town town halls on Bank Holiday Monday record fairs ) dont like it.
Getting a bit obvious now, right? Well, this is an ultra rare song from Neil’s recent Archives vol 1 - which is a Blue-Ray, multimedia fest that I must admit is just a little too involved even for a big fan like me. I have heard a different unreleased version of this tune (done with Crazy Horse I think) but this one works well. By the sounds of it it must have been recorded for Harvest - I could check the interactive Blue-Ray timeline to get the exact date and studio personnel - but, Neil, when you are a working man, time is a much more ruthless duchess than when you are a minted rocker with a big ranch and plenty of toys to indulge your big daft ideas with (only kidding Neil, FOTS love ya)
One of the standouts from the Jack White-produced “Van Lear Rose”. If you don’t know about the life of the Coal Miner’s Daughter then, Wiki it or something, she’s a dude.
As anyone who listens to our next record will discover, I (Cam) am heavily influenced by Southern Soul. To be fair, you’ll be hard pressed to hear that in the next record but, nevertheless, I am (so’s the rest of ‘em too). Indeed, the track “Nobody Out There” (you can hear it on Lighting and Electrical) was the first thing I ever played with Craig and Anna (back in 2004) and the guitar line was my green attempt at a bit o’ Stax. Anyway, Soul Children were the band David Porter and Isaac Hayes put together as a new outlet for their hit machine when Sam and Dave finally couldn’t pretend they liked each other any longer.
I listened to this album non-stop on holiday a couple of months ago. I had their first album on my iPod for a while and I never really completely connected with it… but this new one is a great big slice of sonic melancholy and I love that. Different style but it’s as affecting an artistic soulsearch as Beck’s Seachange. No higher praise from me on that one - and, also, a lot of my older tunes were written whilst in the midst of being a big jessie about some lassie or other.
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Welcome!
Friends of the Stars are a Country / Folk band from Birmingham, UK and have been Commercially Inviable since 2000
We are releasing records on our own Commerically Inviable imprint. The first album, "Lighting & Electrical" is available here and at various other locations on the net.
How we go about releasing our records and subsequent others remains to be seen, so this site will document that experiment, amongst other things. To writing, recording and performing we are now adding 'releasing records' to our list of activites.
We have been friends for a long time, playing and sticking together through thin and thin. We are prone to horrendous collective errors of judgement and have made some mistakes in our time. We'll no doubt make more of these in the near future. We also make some pretty decent tunes.
If you have any questions then please feel free to email info@friendsofthestars.co.uk and we'll get back to you.
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